Lunch Break
by Julia456
Summary: Bringing Tony lunch: an adventure fraught with peril! Well, maybe only if you're Pepper.


_Note: Just a little bit of fluff and speculation, post-"Tales of Suspense." Because speculation is fun, and fluff is even funner. :)_

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"Four, three, two, one…! and _that_ makes it sixteen hours since you've had food or sleep," Pepper announced to Tony – or, more accurately, to the back of Tony's head, because he was welding something on his armor. Undaunted, she waved the take-out bag in his general direction and kept talking as she wove through the burned-out obstacle course that his secret lab had become.

Because, eventually, he would listen. Because did he have a choice? No. He didn't have a choice.

"So guess what I brought? It should be pretty easy to figure out, because you can't carry sleep in a bag – well, you _can_, but I didn't have time to forge a prescription, and for some reason my dad put a lock on the medicine cabinet. How weird is _that_?"

Tony didn't respond, unless you counted "continuing to weld while playing deaf" a response. Pepper rolled her eyes and sighed as loudly as she could. Talking to Tony was like talking to a… a big dumb hunk of metal! Seriously.

She put her hands on her hips. "Oo-kay. Look, it's time to take a break, Tony. Rhodey is!"

Tony kept welding.

She edged around some charred bits of… something… to get closer, and raised her voice a little, just in case he couldn't hear her. "I know you want to rebuild the armory, and all of your Iron Man suits, and you definitely should, because how else are you going to find Gene and your dad, who I totally think is alive, by the way, even though it turned out Gene is a _huge_ liar – and that's probably not a good point to bring up, although you aren't listening to me anyway, are you?"

Not that she was in such a big hurry to talk about Gene or anything. Nope. She was not thinking about Gene today. Or ever again! Not even a little, tiny, infinitesimal bit. No way. Never.

Tony lifted the welding torch away from the armor, and Pepper thought he was going to join the conversation at last, but instead he just moved to a different spot and kept going.

Pepper was _trying_ to be a supportive and understanding friend, but she had her limits. Here she was, bringing him delicious food from her favorite deli when she had the whole day off (because her dad had agreed that being kidnapped by gangsters, again, was traumatic and she deserved to stay home from school and recuperate... or he would have, anyway, if she'd told him) and she could be doing all _kinds_ of fun stuff instead of making sure her friend had something to eat. And here _he_ was, treating her like that annoying background music they played in elevators!

"I could say anything right now," she said, not crossing her arms over her chest only because of the darn take-out bag, "and you would have no idea. Would you."

He kept welding.

"There was a rhinoceros on the subway. It was wearing this trenchcoat. _Totally_ out of season."

Welding.

"And guess what! Whitney shaved her head!"

Welding.

Although she kind of wished Whitney _would_ shave her head. Better yet, that she, Pepper, could hold Whitney down and shave her stupid blonde head _for_ her. (Whitney might've had amnesia or whatever now, but Pepper sure didn't.) So that was a nice thought.

Giddy with revenge fantasies and just a _teensy_ bit of exhaustion from the whole, you know, almost getting eaten by a dragon thing, she kept going: "And I'm not wearing any underwear!"

As soon as she said the words, she wished she hadn't. Because _of course_ at that _exact moment_ Tony flicked off the welding torch and shoved the mask up on his forehead and thus heard _every. Single. Syllable_.

She squeaked and clapped her hands over her mouth.

Tony's head whipped around, wide-eyed with shock. _"What?"_

"Um… it's not true!" Pepper said. Was she blushing? Oh, she was totally blushing. "I mean, it's not true that I'm not… um… you know… because I am! Really! I was just – bringing you this?"

She held up the deli bag, hoping to distract both of them. It didn't work; Tony was still staring at her, and she was still blushing. Was _he _blushing? Oh! Jeez, she hoped not. That would make it _way_ too embarrassing. Not that it wasn't _already_ embarrassing.

Underwear. Really? _Really?_ She didn't want to talk to Tony about her underwear. She didn't want him _thinking_ about it, either, which obviously he was now going to be, because he was a teenage boy and hello, she'd just told him she was naked under her clothes… which of course everyone was, really. But.

"So, here you go," she said, blindly shoving the bag into Tony's hands and retreating backwards. "And I'm just going to go find a big evil dragon to, you know, kill me. Okay, bye!"

"Pepper, wait," he said, juggling a welding torch and a deli take-out bag but still trying to catch her before she could flee back through the obstacle course. "Slow down, back up. Uh... start with: What are you doing here? What's this?"

"Food," Pepper said, enunciating, glad to be back on solid ground. She pointed at the bag. "I brought you some. For one of those things we humans call 'meals'?"

"Oh," he said. He looked at the welding torch in his other hand and then at the armor. "I guess I can stop for a minute."

Pepper felt victorious. It was better than feeling embarrassed, so she went with it. "Great!" she chirped. "Um… is there somewhere we can sit where it's not, you know, completely scorched?"

"Not really." He set the welding stuff aside and brushed halfheartedly at what Pepper was pretty sure used to be a lab table, then hopped up to sit on it despite the soot. "So where's Rhodey? He's usually the first in line to bug me about spending too much time down here."

She wrinkled her nose in distaste at the thought of getting soot all over her clothes, but she'd kind of brought this on herself. And anyway, that's what dry-cleaners were for.

Pepper hopped up next to Tony and plucked the take-out bag from his hands. She found her sandwich first and kept digging for his. "Oh, Rhodey's still getting yelled at by his mom. Sure, last night she went along with the story we told the cops, but I don't think she really believes tong ninjas blew up the compound for no reason while you and Rhodey and I were all doing research at the library. Which makes sense, because that was a total lie. And not a very good one. Next time _I'll _come up with the story, okay?" She paused to pull Tony's food free. "I mean, most of the time she's nice and all, but she can be seriously scary when she's doing, you know, her lawyer thing. Oh! And she told me to tell you that wherever you're hiding, you'd better be home for dinner. Or else."

"Gee, thanks so much for the message," he said drily, accepting the sandwich she passed him. "Explain to me this concept you humans call 'dinner' again?"

Pepper elbowed him lightly in the ribs. "Just unplug before midnight, and you'll be okay."

" 'Okay'," he echoed, his good humor fading into bitterness. "Yeah. I have one fully functional suit, the armory's toast, we're beyond lucky the firefighters and police didn't find it in the first place, and oh yeah, Gene's the Mandarin and he knows who I am, where I live,_ and_ has all five rings. This is all okay."

When he put it like that, um, yeah, all right, she was willing to admit that it did sound pretty bad. Especially the part about Gene. Who she was _not thinking about_. Not at all! Nope. Not even a little.

Still, in her opinion, Tony was overlooking one major bright spot. "But your dad's alive! That's good news, right?"

Tony wasn't even eating his sandwich, the jerk. He was tearing off little bits of it and crumbling them into, well, crumbs, and then dropping the crumbs onto the charred floor. "It should be. But right now it just seems like another problem."

She was so surprised, she nearly dropped her own sandwich. "Tony! Really? That's – that's so awful! But… I see what you mean."

Now it was his turn to be surprised. "You do?"

"Of course," she said, taking a big bite and talking around it. Unlike many people, she could eat and talk without spraying food everywhere. Her dad had once said something about _practice makes perfect_, and Pepper had yet to decide whether or not she was offended by that. "It's like, you have all this _other_ stuff to worry about, and now you have to think about finding your dad, too."

Tony nodded, which meant he was listening to her – for a change! – but he was still tearing his sandwich apart. "Quit doing that!" she added, indignant. "Eat your sandwich!"

He looked down at the shredded edges of his sandwich. "Huh. Oh yeah. Lunch."

It was just to humor her, she knew that, but he took a few gigantic bites and made a big deal out of chewing them. Halfway through those bites, though, he looked astonished and said, "This is delicious!" Only he was not one of those people who could talk and eat at the same time, so it sounded like _thith uh thuhthisish_. Still, she was pretty good at translating.

Pepper tsked and rolled her eyes. "Hello, why do you think it's my favorite deli?"

Tony nodded thoughtfully at her obvious wisdom and ate some more sandwich. Pepper wasn't done talking, also obviously, but she decided to finish her lunch first. That way she'd have more energy when she finished telling him what he should be doing. Although, realistically, she would never be done telling him what he should be doing. That wasn't her fault; Tony was just so… He just needed so much _direction_!

After a minute he swallowed, coughed a little, and said, "Uh, Pepper?"

"I know, I know, you don't have to thank me," she said breezily, waving him off. "Even though it was totally nice of me to bring you lunch and force you to eat it. That's just what friends do! And we're friends, right? No matter what happens with your dad or Iron Man or – or Gene." Who she wasn't thinking about. "We're friends."

"Sure," Tony agreed. "Can I ask my question now?"

She was feeling charitable. "Go for it."

"So this 'meal'. Does it come with something you humans call 'a drink'?"

Pepper had a flashback to the moment she'd climbed out of the taxi, arguing with the driver over the fare because she knew what the rate was and she could do basic math, _thank you very much_, and the cabbie was completely trying to rip her off… and she'd left the sodas, carefully snuggled in their little cardboard thingee, sitting on the backseat.

"Oh," she said, deflating a little. Well, okay, best-case scenario: maybe they'd spilled when that thieving jerk of a cabbie had peeled out. Or when he'd taken that turn at the base of the driveway. And he'd been so busy shaking his fist at her through the window, he probably hadn't noticed cups tipping over and ruining his lousy upholstery until it was way too late. Which served him right. "Oops. I guess I could run up and get something from Rhodey's fridge -? Although it's going to be really hard to sneak past his mom. Oh! I can practice being stealthy! You know, SHIELD agents have to be stealthy all the time." She frowned. "Most of them don't have to face Rhodey's mom in lawyer mode, though. She is ten _thousand_ times scarier than Nick Fury, if you ask me."

"No argument there." Tony finished his sandwich with two more bites and brushed off his hands. "It's okay - I'll find something later. Thanks for the lunch break, Pepper."

He crunched up the paper wrapper from his sandwich and stuffed it back into the take-out bag, then hopped down and retrieved his welding gear.

"Anytime," she said. "Well, not actually _any_ time, because lunch –"

"I got it," he said, cutting her off, but grinning, so she wasn't offended.

She wadded up her own paper and tried to toss it into the bag, freethrow-style. Of course she missed, and she had to climb down from the used-to-be-a-table and bend over to retrieve it.

When she straightened again, she caught Tony giving her a look. A very weird, speculative look. Like he was wondering how to test a theory. Or…

She sighed, resigned. "You're thinking about my underwear, aren't you."

Tony's eyes darted around the room, and he got very interested in fiddling with the welding torch. "Uh… no?"

"Well… don't," she said, prim and proper and ladylike, and did a crisp heel-turn-march that was pretty impressive considering she was totally wearing the wrong shoes for it _and_ had a bag of trash in her hands _and_ had to navigate a veritable minefield on her way out. At the door she glanced back over her shoulder, just to make sure Tony was fully appreciating her dramatic exit.

He was welding.

She rolled her eyes – but stayed for a second longer, watching him work. He was back in the genius-inventor zone, a zillion miles away from Planet Earth. Okay, it was a safe bet he wasn't thinking about her underwear _now_. Probably he would forget all about it by the time he was done working. Which was good, because just like she wasn't thinking about Gene, Tony shouldn't be thinking about her underwear. Of course not. Hadn't she just told him _Don't_?

"Unless… you want to," she murmured, still looking at him.

Then she realized what she'd said, squeaked, and got the heck out of there before she dug herself in any deeper. And she made a mental note to get Rhodey to do this kind of stuff from now on.

Evil dragon statues and tong ninjas were so not a problem, but these lunch breaks?

_Way_ too dangerous.

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end!


End file.
